The other did not reply. His eyes went out across the moor again. The preacher's homely phrase had brought a host of sudden longings to the front. Settled in life, he muttered to himself; was that what was amiss with him? Then the thought of Kate Strangeways came to him—the picture of her husband, as he had last seen him with his head on the flagstones of the Bull doorway—the quick understanding that he had met no other woman who could grip his fancy just as Kate did. Then he remembered the husband again.
"Don't talk rot," he said, and fell into silence.
Another horseman showed round the bend in the road that hid Ling Crag. He drew rein as he neared them.
"Can you direct me to Wynyates?" he asked.
Griff started and looked at the stranger's face twice before he could make up his mind on some question suggested by the voice and figure. He put out his hand at last.
"Why, Roddick!" he cried. "How the mischief do you come to be scouring the country at this time of night?"
"What, it's never you, Lomax? Here, let me get a closer look at your face. By the powers it is, though! You've pulled me up with one question, and I'll pull you up with another; how the mischief do you come to be here?"
"I live here; and that is more than you can say for yourself, at any rate," Griff chuckled.
"There you're wrong, my boy. I've taken Wynyates, and am at this moment on my way to it."
"Then, why ask your road? You didn't take the place on trust, did you, without ever seeing it?"